“Yes,” he encouraged.
“She was terribly excited and said that the thing, whatever it was, was to be done this evening, at the changing hour of the shifts. She told me that a man named Backus was to call you by ’phone and tell you that there was a man hurt in the tunnel. Then she said that you had already gone up the line; she saw you on an engine that overtook and passed her.”
“I saw a woman running on the Powder Can road, but I didn’t recognize her as Judith,” said David.
“You wouldn’t, of course, with the engine running fast. When she told me that you were already on your way up here, I didn’t know what to do. Then I thought of the telephones, and sent her up to the hotel to find Herbert Oswald and ask him to call you at the tunnel ’phone, while I ran down to the Athenia to get father to ’phone. There was nobody in the Athenia; father had gone out somewhere. Then I tried to find Mr. Plegg, but he was gone, too. I didn’t know where to look for another telephone nearer than the Inn railroad station, and I was starting to run down there when I saw Callahan on his engine and made him bring me up here.”
“But surely you saw the night shift getting ready to come in, didn’t you? Do you mean to tell me that that bunch of thick-headed stone-borers let you come in here alone?”
“They were not to blame—not at all. I merely asked if you were in here, and when one of them said you were, I ran.”
“I am too thankful to say what I ought to say, about them and about you—thankful that you are alive,” said David, and his voice trembled a little. “One second, a half-second, later and you would have been fairly under the slide. As it was, we had to dig you out; and—and Vinnie, I hope no human being will ever suffer as I did when we found you. I—I thought you were dead, and that I had killed you!”
“It wouldn’t have been you,” she said softly; “it would have been the thing we call Business; the thing that is killing all the kindliness, all the fairness, all the best there is in us.”
“No,” he denied sturdily, “I can’t let you shift the blame that way. I knew what ought to be done here; I have known it all along. If I had made a fight for it with your father, as I should have done, he would have given in.”
“I don’t know,” she said wearily. “That was what I went down to the Athenia for this evening—before I met Judith. Father wouldn’t listen to me; and now——”